She asks me if I wanted to meet her later for a kiss. Something to remember her by.
“Where?” I ask her…stalling…
“I’ll wait by the water fountain…in the corner…next to the girls bathroom,” she says and smiles.
But I run, deciding it better to form a memory…of long black hair down to indian small of back , the pure beginnings of pubescent wet dreams…and the what-could-have-beens. Those first fruits, fertilized with a touch of holiness and hell on edenic soil. Her skin baring the softness of that first ripe mango you pelted down yourself…soon to be nothing short of liquid gold dripping down your face.
I would chase her around the savannah, and now she only chases dreams across an immigrants ocean, and beyond the veil of America’s dream. She reaches out every now and again, in the sing-song taunt of her sisters, and the nostalgia scented pot of pelou.
Maybe she is still there, waiting, in pleated uniform skirt, where the trees are full, and everything is bigger than the size of an outstretched hug. Where the sublime lays trapped on fading Polaroids. Daring innocence to return.
Written by Veron Graham
Topics: Prose Poetry